The spatial politics of siting a radioactive waste facility in Korea: A mixed methods approach

• We investigate spatial matters of a competitive local referendum.
• Geographical factors affect voting behavior for siting the nuclear facility.
• Referendum system contains spatial inequity within/across the jurisdiction.
• Causes of spatial outliers in acceptance rate were verified by interviews.

Low-level radioactive waste disposal facilities represent one of the most controversial Locally Unwanted Land-Uses (LULUs). In Korea in 2005, one of these disposal facilities was assigned to be placed in Gyeongju city after a competitive local referendum amongst four candidate cities took place. Many conflicts occurred between the residents living within and near the Gyeongju city following the decision. In this paper, we explore the spatial issues in the referendum system and aim to discover the reason behind these conflicts. To do so, we analyzed the spatial distribution of the acceptance rate in each ward of the four cities using several spatial statistical methods, Getis-Ord G and Gi*, and several types of interviews. We found that the referendum system has a problem with spatial inequity within and across its jurisdiction. Furthermore, the causes of the spatial outliers in the acceptance rate were verified by interviews. The results suggest that spatial matters should be considered to increase the local acceptance of LULUs.